New bees / new hives

After my bees died last fall I vowed to try again. Instead of going 'local' this time I decided to order my bee's from Wolf Creek Apiaries. Wolf Creeks bees are all 4.9mm (small cell).

"Our stock is derived from the wild feral stock of the Duck River Basin. We add a little Russian genetics, so that the bees will fly at 38 degrees if the sun is shining and the wind is not blowing. Some Italian genetics are added for honey production. The gentleness and winter handiness of the bees is achieved from the addition of Carniolan genetics. The result is a gentle bee that is a good honey producer." - from Wold Creeks website.

Today my two packages of bees arrived. As expected the post office was glad to get rid of them.

It wasn't the best day to be hiving packages of bees. It was windy, it was overcast and it was sprinkling off and on. There was a break where the sun almost came out so I took advantage of it and hived the bees.

This is the first time I've dealt with packaged bees. My bees last year came as nucs. I've read forums and watched videos so I felt like I was prepared. The bee's on the other hand appeared to really like their shipping container. I wound up prying the wood and staples holding the screen on to get the bees out of the box. I later found another video on Youtube that recommended just that.

I had grand plans this winter. To build 2 new standard"ish" Top Bar Hives to replace my Barrel Top Bar Hives from last year. Lets just say that I build  one hive when I got the call from Wolf Creek that my bees were shipping the next week. The idea being that I would put each package on opposite sides of the hive and separate them with a follower board and an 'in hive' feeding chamber.

I got both packages installed without incident. Also without spraying them with sugar water nor puffing them with smoke. I was wearing a bee jacket and gloves. However they didn't really seem to pay any attention to me at all.

Here is a picture of the feeding chamber and a jar of honey from my old hive. 

There is another jar just like this on on the right side of the follower board covered with the bar labeled 2.

I reused the bars from my barrel hives, though I did have to trim them down a bit to fit the new hives.

It didn't take the bees very long to figure out the entrance hole and start milling around the entrance.

And here they are snug and bees in a beehive. The colonies entrance is on the other side of the hive. Hopefully that will avoid to much conflict.

You may also note that I didn't paint the hive. I just really didn't have time for it to dry. I literally finished it Monday morning before I picked up the bees. The plan is to build another, paint it and move both colonies into it. I'll then paint this hive and separate the colonies into their own hives.